Are You Thirsty?

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the Student of Life Podcast. Listen, we're going to get into so many transferable truths throughout the content of these episodes that I believe God is going to use to help you apply, because he's going to reveal what's already been there the entire time. Enjoy. Yo, what's up? Welcome to the Student of Life Podcast and I'm your host Tim Pratt Jr. and I'm excited to be back. I know, listen, we're still in season 5. This will be episode 5 of season 5, and I know I did like 4 episodes and concluded our leadership series. Right up until that, I know I was saying, you know, my wife and I were getting ready for the birth of our daughter. She's been here since October 15th. She's healthy. The boys are doing well, and most importantly, through the power of God, my wife— thank God— my wife as well, she's bouncing back. I was off for 6 weeks on family leave. I'm just— I'm going into my third week back, uh, just to give you all some little context of what's been going on. And I had every intent, had episodes scripted out and things like that, interviews lined out, but I just chose— I do prayer. I was like, you know what, no, I'm shutting everything down. Even took a break from school, my master's in ministry and leadership. Uh, so that kind of pushed me back into probably not wrapping up until late next year. But it's cool because I wanted to just be present. I wanted to be present, spend more time in my devotional life, and just be present with my wife and my family. My kids. And, uh, that's what I did, so that our ministry obligations and everything— because even in that, my first ministry is my family outside of God. And so therefore— and oh, just real quick, I know, uh, ministry— devotion life and ministry are not the same thing. My walk with Christ and my ministry work is not the same thing. So therefore, it was just important that I took care of my first ministry, which is my family. But I'm back. This is a part of the ministry, the podcast, and the outreach and things I believe that God laid on my heart. No matter if it reaches just one person or thousands, millions, or whatever, but I do appreciate the support and people writing in here and there like, hey man, just missed some of the content, can't wait, and all that type of stuff. And so I'm— like I said, I'm back, I'm back. Have a few interviews rescheduled and lined out to conclude season 5. Might give you all 6, 7 more episodes, maybe 8, I don't know, uh, somewhere in there. But this one, jumping right into it, Season 5, Episode 5, Are You Thirsty? Are you thirsty? Let's get into it. So for a general context, I'm going to extract a few verses out of the story within the Bible in John 4 with the woman in the well. Now I do understand that it's a general context that's within, uh, within this passage scripture where she got into some things about how they worship, where they worship, and things like that. I'm not going to too much focus on that part for this episode because like I say, you know, we like to go up around that. Sometimes I tell people 30 minutes, sometimes episodes are 13, 14, sometimes they go 35, 40. But for the most part, I do have a target where give or take I try not to start going so far over 30 minutes, uh, give or take. And I don't worry about too much staying under that. So one thing I want to say, and I want to encourage people, because real quick before we get into the content of this episode, are you thirsty? Read your Bible. When I'm teaching things, or like, as this podcast, this is for like soundbite stuff and just quick things. It's like, okay, through the power of God that God uses me to study, you know, show myself approved unto him, not man. And then he gives it to me for practical revelation, and it works on me. Then I'm passing on through this microphone and all this type of stuff. At the end of the day, I want to encourage you to still go search these things for yourself. This is to inspire you to go dig deeper in the word of God and truly get to know and become one with him yourself. Don't just take everything that I'm saying for for face value. Search the scriptures out yourself. Search them out yourself and pray that God reveals things to you and he brings forth the revelation that you need to draw closer to him. And if anybody that's preaching, teaching the gospel, evangelizing, whatever, if they're not encouraging you to do that or they feel threatened by you doing that, uh, something is wrong. That should be an indicator something is wrong there. So therefore, let's jump into it. Let's jump into it. John 4, and I'll be reading from the NIV. John 4 13-17. Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks this water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. He told her, 'Go call your husband and come back.' 'I have no husband,' she replied. Jesus said to her, 'You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had 5 husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.' Let's stop there. So like I say, I know that this goes into a whole general context with the disciples not being there and the whole thing with, like I say, where they worship, the Samaritan and the Jew and all this type of stuff. I don't want to too much focus on that right now, but this still will be in context because it's very important. It's still going to be in context, but I'm going to focus on a principle for the context of this episode and how we rock on this podcast. Let's start right at verse 13. Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. So what we have going on here, and we look at the practical application of this, is that when we are pursuing things in life, this world— we are spiritual beings, we are pursuing these things in life— whether you're trying to obtain your degree, certification, new job, move up the career ladder, relationships, get married, have kids, uh, what— whatever it is, you know, win a championship if you're coaching, if you're playing Uh, when you're playing video games and you beat a level that's tormenting you or whatever, you go to the next level and so on and so on. We stay thirsty. We stay thirsty for more. It's just, it's an ongoing thirst because that void comes back and now it's needing something else to re— uh, to quench that thirst. And so we live in this world where we're consistently bombarded. Like with me, for example, it's, it's Like books, for example. Like, I, I really, at one point, man, I just was wasting money on books because I'm like, it'll be a book to come out and I didn't finish this book, and I'm like, okay, well dang, so now this new author that I like, he wrote a book that's kind of similar to this book. And so I'm, I'm just thirsty, like I'm just— but I'm not really taking the time to really become one with it. And, and most importantly, okay, what is God saying to me? How I'm, I'm gearing and I'm thirsty for these authors to keep writing. But what about Christ? What about Jesus? What about the Bible? And so here we go again. It's just, it's an ongoing thirst and it's, it's just on and on. Money, like, you know, you come out making $45,000, $50,000 and then you make $70,000, then you make $100,000. It's like, so that's $50,000 more, you know. Like I said, just say when you started making $50,000 and then now you make $100,000. And it's like, oh man, okay, I need more, I need more. Okay, $50,000 more, but it's, it's this ongoing lifestyle. So it's like, man, I'm thirsty again, I need more and more and more because these things don't fill the spiritual void. It's in essence is what I'm trying to say. And so when we get caught up in this pursuit of things, we have to be very careful. Like for example, being married, I can't I can meet a lot of my wife's needs that God has called me to meet, but that spiritual need that only God can do, I— it's nothing that I can possibly do. Now, I can do things that she might feel like, oh man, all my needs are met, but at the end of the day, when it's all said and done, it's going to come, no, no, no, only Jesus. And vice versa. That's when people get in relationships and they get through the honeymoon phase and all of this type of stuff, and they think, okay, God gave me this person and I thank God. And you know, now you got the Sierra prayer and all this type of stuff, which is cool good. I'm not taking nothing away from that, but I'm just saying, if it's not understood right, that Jesus is the source and he fulfills the need, that void, then what'll happen is you will start to place on your spouse with only Jesus, or in that relationship or whatever, your kids, you, you will start to place only what Jesus can give you. And that's why we see it right in verse 14 in this text, is, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. He can only fill it. He can only give it. He can only create this in us because Jesus is self-sufficient. He's all-knowing. He's Spirit. He, he is the essence of— he is the Word of God. And so he can only fill that void that sometimes when we get caught up in these earthly pursuits— you get a car, then you want another one in the next year. You get in the house, you want another one 4 or 5 years. It's just, it's ongoing thirst that's going to always be there. But when we get into contentment and all of these type of things— not that it's bad to desire these things, but it's when these things take precedent over Christ and we're trying to fill a void that only he can fill— then we have to ask ourselves, okay, why are we thirsty? Are we thirsty? And then if we say yes, why are we thirsty? Does it make sense? And so we see in the text, as we jump down, it's an issue going on right here in this principle, because this is why I asked, why are you thirsty? So up until this point, if you go back and read like the entire context of this thing, this whole conversation that they were having, Jesus was patient with her. He was very patient with this woman. He met her where she was. He engaged with her and all of this. But I want you just to see something in this transition. Keep in mind, he didn't just come to save but to be Lord over our life. He does not want us to stay the same. You cannot truly have an encounter with Jesus and stay the same as you are. It doesn't work. It, it is nothing— I'm not saying that you were raised bad or anything like that, or you are even just a morally corrupt person, but what I'm saying is that It's no way that you can be introduced to Jesus and remain the same, because if you are, then I mean, if you are the same person, no change, you might want to check that if you have truly had a divine encounter with God, a divine encounter with the Holy Spirit, Jesus himself. And so Jesus is patient with her, but then he goes in, he drops a truth bomb with her. He says, go call your husband and come back. And she says, I have no husband, she replied. Jesus is about to go in. He did go in. So Jesus knew that she wanted the benefits without the commitment. So this is what it looks like in our life, in context, in the practical application. A lot of times we want compliance over commitment. We want to comply with the things of God, we want to comply with the things of the world, but we don't really want to commit to God. Does that make sense? We want God to comply with us, but we don't want to commit to him. That, that's the principle that I want us to focus on in this text. Go call your husband, come back. I have no husband, she replied. Jesus said to her, you are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had 5 husbands, and the man you'll— the— and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true. We got to be real. God is not going to bless who we pretend to be. He's not going to bless us when it's not a commitment, not the way that we expect. It has to be a total depravity on him, saying, I need you, I need— only you can fill this, only you can meet this, Christ. Because what happens in this world, we just learn to start coping with things, just like in relationships. You have 5 bad relationships, you go through things in life, you look at people with fornication and infidelity issues, it's really just a void that truthfully a self-help book and counsel is not going to me personally fulfill you, fulfill you. I truly believe that you need Christ. Now, do I believe there, there's some morally people out there that, that don't know Christ at all, don't acknowledge him, and they don't do these acts like greed, and they're just morally, like, just by a world standard, morally good people? Yes, I do. I do. But somewhere along that life, whatever that is, they might not have infidelity issues, they might not have fornication, they might not have greed, but it's something in them. No matter how morally good they are by a world standard, it's something in them that only Jesus can meet, and they will continue to struggle with it. They will continue to stay thirsty on it no matter how much they hide it. This is what Jesus is saying. So I want to ask you the question: are you thirsty? And why are you thirsty? Because Jesus knew that she wanted the benefits without the commitment. We want the benefits of God without the commitment. We want the benefits of God without totally being devoted to him. Not like treating him like a side chick or side man or whatever you— whatever the latest terms are. Not basically loving him in private and having this relationship, but then he's not good enough for us in public. He's not good enough for us to commune with every day. It's no way possible that I believe my wife will allow me to sit up here and do— not, not that we are trying to do things for people to see us, but I don't— I believe my wife would have an issue if I just did all of these things in private, or dating her or something like that, along with— but especially with being my wife, I'm doing all these things in private, telling her I love her. I'm like having these stay-at-home date nights and all of this, and I'm talking about— and we can do— but I never show her public affection. Not once again, it's not for people. But at some point she's just like, are you ashamed of me? Are you really committed to me? So is Christ asking you that question? Are you really committed to him? And then if you are, does your life look like that? Because just because you acknowledge him does not mean that you're committed to him. That's, that's for all of us. Just because you acknowledge and you go to local fellowship and you might pray here and there, that does not mean that you are totally committed. That's just, once again, like somebody— and I, and I, and I, I'm not trying to just harp on certain things, but because marriage is the representation of kind of like the relationship that Christ has with us, the church— if once again, if I'm married and I am carrying out acts of infidelity over and over, I'm habitually practicing it practicing this. I'm complying in certain areas with my wife, but I'm not committed to her. I'm not faithful to her. Do, do you do that with Christ? Because I'm— it's another thirst driving me versus the thirst of my wife. In the context of this marriage, my wife should be fulfilling those needs, those sexual needs and things like that that I have, not, not other women. So once again, are you thirsty? And why are you thirsty? So Jesus is going in there. He is really He just dropped the truth bomb. And so as we go and we keep reading this text, Jesus wanted to basically get past the deflection and get to the pain of the problem. And in other words, he showed her that she had a need. She had a need. He wasn't going to let her deflect. He wasn't— like, think about when you're sharing truth and you're really about to go in with people in love, because sometimes we want to go in without love, but we're demonstrating grace and truth, and we're doing it in love through the power of God. And then a person starts to deflect. You know, you say things like— you ask— I tell my wife all the time, like, when someone asks you a question, and if you choose to lie or deflect or whatever you do to not really address that issue, you're living a lie. You're living in deflection. No matter how much you convince yourself, if you stay there and you don't be truthful in that situation, say, okay, no, no, no, this is what happened, this is an issue, this is an issue for me, this is what's going on, I have a need, I'm not going to deflect in this area, I have a need for Christ, I need to submit this to Christ, I need to turn this thirst over to Christ. We all have that need for him. Yours might look different than mine, but at the end of the day, it's still a need. Because even when Jesus said, go call your husband and come back, and she said, I have no husband, she replied. And Jesus goes on to tell her, the fact you have had 5 husbands. Okay, what if God said, bring me— let's just say this is each husband represented a month or a year, the last 5 years of your life. Let's just say if it's a year What if God said, bring me your internet activity? It don't matter if you deleted, if you've been in Google Private or whatever, but bring me your internet activity. Because like, I'm like, like, he legit, and he like, when you bring it to him, it's all inclusive. He already know anyway, but it's for you. So it don't matter like, oh, I deleted this, so he— no, God knows everything. Now you can fool the person but not Christ, not God. So he's now, he's asking that question. Because it was never for him. It was never for Jesus. So what if he said, bring me your internet activity? No, no, bring me your phone records. Bring me your phone records over the last 5 years. Bring me your prayer time, intimate prayer time. Bring me your devotional time. Bring me those conversations you've had over the last 5 years. Bring it to me. Bring me your bank records, your financial records over the last 5 years. When you say you love me and I give and I'm for you and I'm representing the kingdom and I'm steward, bring, bring me your financial records. And so on and so on. Bring me the deep things, the thoughts over the last 5 years that you've had. Bring this to me. What would it look like? Will we reply like her, or will we start trying to deflect? Will we start trying to lie our way out of it? Or will we just be real and go to the point where Jesus said at the end of verse 18, what you have said is quite true? Be truthful with it. Just be truthful. Lord, I'm thirsty in this area. And sometimes thirsts are created due to other people. But at the end of the day, you can't put it— nothing— at the end of the day, right now, just using my wife and our friendship, is certain things at my job or whatever can happen, and depending on what happened in the day-to-day opera, it can create a thirst that I have to submit to Christ because of what had happened. I say, no, no, I need to fulfill this thirst based on what they did. But no, Christ is saying, no, no, no, you need to turn that over to me. You need to submit that to me. That's not a healthy thirst because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to deal with that for you. Submit that to me. Stay faithful to me because what you're going to happen is you're going to— that thirst, you're going to be driven by that thirst and it's going to lead into some stuff and some other issues, but you really could have just submitted it to me. You could have submitted that to me and I could have filled it in the moment. Because of your flesh, it might not be filled like you want, but at the end of the day, I'm Christ, I'm God. Through the power of Holy Spirit, I'm gonna fill it the right way because it's about eternal life, not a temporary satisfaction of the flesh. It's about eternal life, not this temporary body. So are you thirsty? Are you thirsty? And then ask the question, why are you thirsty? Why? That's it, that's it, that's the text, that's the principle that I want to focus on on this. So we back, baby, we back. I— listen, I am locked in. We're back on weekly episodes dropping every Monday. Might move it up to 12 AM, might leave it at 7 AM, I don't know. But we are back. Listen, the outro is going to start in a little bit, but I want to encourage you, share, share, share, because I believe in my heart that I told my life, this, even as we transition into life with Tim and Aisha, uh, or nice and Tim, whatever it's called, even as we transition with that and we kind of do something with our family, uh, like I think I said this in the beginning, and if I did, I apologize, or I might have didn't, whatever, but I'm gonna do what God tells me to do. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do what God tells me to do, and I'ma, no matter, like I say, who this inspires, I just believe it's a reason why God has me on this microphone, and I'm proud that it's up to— I got, last time I checked, like, uh, over 1,000 subscribers or something like that. But I'm happy that it's going the way that it's going. I'm happy that the downloads are racking up, especially the unique ones and stuff like that. So I just want to encourage you to keep sharing, not pointing people to me, but pointing them to Christ, because I want you to study the Bible for yourself. I want you to build and cultivate that intimate relationship with Christ because he desires it. He wants you to commune with him. He wants to fulfill your thirst. He wants to take care of that. And so I pray that you be blessed, man. I pray that this, like I say, just leads you into a path of just really digging in for yourself. And as I always say, if it's any questions or concerns or whatever, if it's things like, no, no, Tim, I don't think you could hit me up, man. Hit me up. Like, I— listen, I'm teachable. I have to remain teachable. I strive to walk in humility through the power of God, not in my own effort. But— and I just, I just want to do right. I just want to live right and please God. And so therefore, uh, just engage, man. I'm looking for engagement. I'm looking for just helping people win in life. And I just believe, in the context of my life, that no matter what you do in this world, no matter what you accomplish in this world, you do not win, especially in eternity, if you do not truly know and accept Christ. If you don't accept Christ and know him and give up your life, you do not win in the end. You probably win in a world standard, but this is only temporary. But we got to think eternity, eternal, an eternal perspective. So be blessed, man. I love you all. Keep doing what you're doing, and I pray that you have an awesome day, awesome week. And you guys be blessed and keep, keep, please keep representing Christ on this earth. Peace. Hey, what's up? I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to the Student Life Podcast today. If this content has impacted you in any kind of way, please take some time to share it on your social media feeds. And also, if you want to connect with me or just learn more about me, go over to www.timothypratt.org. Once again, thanks.